Ken suited up as well, checking his suit with Lorain before heading out.  He clumped carefully over to the three working and pitched in. "I'll help you with that repeater Linus.  With the two of us we should have it aligned and running in no time>"

"Thanks, Ken. Check it's secure, will you?"

He began to run comms protocols, establishing the linkage.

The EVA team got down to the job of securing the cutter and laying guide lines to the likeliest entry points. Inside the cutter, Lorrain and her people began prepping to suit up and begin exploration of the mother ship itself. There was a feeling of excitement and anticipation.

Outside, Linus reached the top of the crater wall and successfully shot a bolt into the asteroid's stony surface to anchor a repeater. One that was secured he switched it on. A strobe on top of the antenna began blinking, providing a visual cue for the ship and/or the cutter. The antenna would allow them to keep in contact with the Inquisitor if it slipped below the horizon if they strayed while station-keeping.

Just in time, too! As he finished up with the repeater beacon, the Inquisitor's spherical white hull above them slipped further and further behind them as the asteroid rotated. It soon dropped out of sight of everyone down in the crater. Linus could still see it. Everything appeared fine but the repeater was taking it's time establishing a comms link. The Inquisitor slipped farther and farther back.

Ken leaned forward and began to dig the supporting cables into the surface of the asteroid.  He noted Linus still working with the instruments.  "How is it going?  Can you get a good synch Linus?"

"It is taking its own sweet time," grumbled Linus, adjusting the gain and fiddling with antenna alignment.

When Blake hears about the mother sip dropping out of sight, he makes a mental computation about how long they can survive here ...  Space is a very unforgiving critter.

The ship got smaller and smaller and was soon out of sight to Linus as well.

The cutter lacked the sophisticated long-term nutritional and life support recycling systems of a starship. But it did contain 600 person-days of rations for the expedition personnel, about 2 months worth. (Aboard were the pilot, Jerri, the gunner, Lexi, plus Jack. Lorrain and Hanno were there, plus Ken, Blake, Linus and Neva made 10.) The cutter could be fully operational as long as the fuel lasted, 2 weeks, then they could deploy solar panels to supply electricity to maintain minimal functions (basic life support) almost indefinitely.

In reply to GM (msg # 16):

Out of the airlock now, Lorrain asked via her Vacc Suit radio, "what's going on? Where's the ship? I don't see it and we've lost telemetry."

I'm not sure Professor. I don't recall it being part of the mission profile either.  Ken, Linus, do either of you remember if the main ship was going to depart after finding our site ??

"Not that I knew of," said Linus, "But I was busy putting the supplies together, so I may have missed something."

In reply to Linus Spruance (msg # 19):

Neva shook her head.  ~Yep.  This trip is starting out terrific.~

Vacc Suit Radio:  "This isn't a good sign.  On the other hand it does give us motive to check things out.  I'm sure things will be fine and that the ship will return."

Neva's communication was only three sentences but in those three sentences she was optimistic as well as pessimistic.  She did, however, try to sound optimistic at the end of the transmission.

Neva's right, only one direction now.  We may have to move fast too.

In reply to Prof. Lorain Messandi (msg # 17):
"Lorrain, this is Jack.

"Roger. It looks like the Inquisitor is no longer above us. If they lost power and are unable to maintain station-keeping the mother ship will rotate and they'll go below the horizon. That's all we know. Do you want to take the cutter up and have a look for the ship?"

Outside as well, Jack looked up by leaning his Vacc Suit back, then turned to look over at Lorrain.

In reply to 'Lucky Jack' McIntyre (msg # 22):

Thinking about it for a moment, Lorrain replied,

"Hum. The cutter is fast enough to catch up to the ship so if there's a problem maybe we can help.

"We have some other choices, far as I see it. We can take off and catch up to the ship, maybe before they enter Jumpspace, if that's where they're going. But if the ship has been hijacked then they can also shoot us down.

"We can wait here and see if the problem resolves itself.

"Or, we can wait here but in the mean time unload as much as we can in case the Inquisitor comes back and tries to destroy the cutter.

"Lastly, we can try and hide the cutter. Again, we don't know there's a problem with the Inquisitor other than maybe technical.

"Neva, Linus, Ken, Blake, what do you think?" She asked the crew.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:43, Thu 01 June 2017.

If we have been sold out, there's not much we can do.  It all depends on how far they have to travel to link up with their benefactor before returning.    Blake thinks, something scouts don't do very well it seems, just ask the navy.

We could send one person out with a tether line and a maneuvering pack from the cutter for a look/see.  Or we could gently goose the cutter upwards for a look/see, keeping it as low as possible for detection purposes, keeping the asteroid between us and them.  Lexi, Jack, up to playing hide and seek ??  Meanwhile we have an airlock to install.

In reply to Blake Renfield (msg # 24):

"I'll take the cutter up above the crater lip to get LOS once we get the airlock unloaded in a few minutes. We can always re-secure the cutter when we're done."

In reply to Lexis Garcia (msg # 25):

"No problem. I'll volunteer as well to be pilot."

He set about getting the portable airlock set up over the crevice they believed led to the maze of tunnels honeycombing the asteroid.

In reply to 'Lucky Jack' McIntyre (msg # 26):

"All right. It should take 5 minutes to warm up the cutter and cast off. Let's unload as much gear as we can!"

Linus pitched in to help.

The stay-cables were quickly removed. It took about six minutes.

In that time, they managed to get the portable airlock out of the cutter airlock and to the surface. It only loosely floated on the surface of the crater, as the asteroid's weak gravity was counteracted by the coriolis force of the ship's rotation. A small amount of gear and supplies were also pushed out to land haphazardly.

As soon as everyone was off, the cutter engaged its anti-grav drive and began rising up to the lip of the crater, the above. Lucky Jack transmitted,

"Landing party from Cutter-1. Be advised I have the Inquisitor on radar. Range to target 1000 km. Not responding to hails. Ah.. wait one... Shit! We're getting painted! They got a target lock, I'm initiating evasive maneuvers and taking us down."

The cutter began to spin and slew as it began to descend. There was a bright soundless flash near the stern of the craft as it was struck by a pulse laser. (Being infrared, the beam was invisible to the naked eye but the metal and plastic flash-boiling away was visible as a cloud and spray of particles.) "Ah, Mayday Mayday, Cutter-1 is going down, say again we are going down. We have lost all maneuver drivers and are reduced to auxiliary power."

Indeed, the pulse lasers had cut off the rear hull where the maneuver drives were located. The cutter was helpless to slow its descent now using the Maneuver drive or antigrav thrusters. The cutter's central fuselage continued to spin downwards while the severed stern section spun away towards a wall of the crater. Lower and lower the stricken cutter dropped towards the pile of supplies and gear, and the landing party...

Linus eyed up the trajectory. No point in running until you'd figured out the impact point, or you could as easily run INTO trouble as out of it!

Somewhere in the back of his mind he was cursing as only a Navy man can do.

This is not going to end well.  Like Linus, Blake can only watch and see where the parts land/impact.  Blake looks around for the cutting lazer/welder, the one most useful tool to have.  Then he checks his suit gauges ...

In reply to Blake Renfield (msg # 31):

"Shit!  This isn't going to end well.  You guys got a projectory on it yet?  How far away will it miss us."

Neva was making sure that her suit was intact and that she had her weapons.  She knew that they wouldn't waste time once the ship landed.  They'd have to move fast.

It looked like the stricken cutter was coming straight down!

The "Eagle" class modular cutter was built with a command module in the shape of a flattened cone with two windows mounted up front, mated to a central "bus" with four leg pods (front and back on both left and right) where a payload module could be mounted on the centreline between them. At the rear was an engine pod with fuel tanks and maneuver drive. On the leg pods were thruster packs for attitude adjustment and on the dorsal surface were quad retro-rocket thruster modules.

The could see puffs of gas sprout from the attitude-control jets mounted on the quad landing gear pods. Slowly, the cutter stopped spinning, but it was still falling down towards them, fast! They could either make a run (well, microgravity jump) for the crater lip, or take shelter in the crevices at the bottom of the crater.

"Yo Guys!  Quit the chit chat and get to the crater.  Not sure We'll make it to the crevices at the bottom, or if we want to but get to the lip at least."

Neva, with her pack on her, started to do micro jumps to get to the crater.  Hopefully she and the others would make it in time.